Do things for yourself and save money

by Georgia
(Bristol)

I totally agree with your comments about reducing, reusing and recycling. We all throw away far too much stuff.

I try very hard to be really careful about what I buy in the first place. When I shop for food I try to buy ingredients so that I can make my own things rather than buying processed food that has loads of packaging. This not only helps the environment it helps my budget because I save lots of money by preparing my own food from scratch.

I make my own soups, pies and bread. If I have vegetables and pieces of meat left over then I turn them into soup. Often there's one portion left over from a meal, so I put this into a reusable container and freeze it. I give these dinners to my dad. He lives alone and doesn't like the frozen ready meals that you can buy. He prefers the meals that my sister and I make and freeze for him.

We used to use foil containers, like the ones you get takeaways in, but we decided that this cost a lot of money and it would be better to use plastic containers that could be washed up and reused. This saved us quite a bit of money and is working really well for us.

Another way I try to take care of the environment is by buying local meat and produce. If the food we eat hasn't had to travel miles and miles it's fresher and helps the local farmers and shops to stay in business. It's often cheaper than the big supermarkets too. A win, win situation.